THE Stadium crowd of 36,503 unfurled a lusty boo in the ninth inning last night. It has become a ritual. Clemens starts. Spectators boo.

This time, the plot twist put a huge smile on the face of the man getting jeered. Joe Torre never has been so happy to be booed in his life.

When Torre made his first trip to the mound during the Yankees’ 2-0 win over the Twins – a four-hit shutout Clemens shared with Mariano Rivera – the crowd let him have it, hoping they would change his mind.

For an instant, Torre must have felt like he went back in time umpteen years to the days he was managing the awful Mets. It’s been that long since Torre heard boos of the magnitude he heard last night with two outs.

The last time Torre was booed in New York?

“I don’t know, but it felt pretty good,” Torre said after the game.

When taking the ball from Clemens, who didn’t put up a fight as much as you know he would have loved to finish it for what would have been his 46th shutout and second with the Yankees, Torre told the five-time Cy Young Award winner, “Get cheered for a change. Walk off the mound.”

Clemens threw hard, had his forkball diving and hit his spots against the overmatched Twins, who fled town having split a four-game series.

Clemens had to be so sharp to win because lefty Eric Milton, the key acquisition for the Twins in the Chuck Knoblauch deal, showed why the Yankees were so high on him. He took a one-hit shutout into the ninth.

This would be the same Milton who was so pumped at the prospect of making a career with the Yankees he had the logo tatooed onto the back of his shoulder.

Milton was jacked all right, pitching at the Stadium, against his original organization, but those factors were secondary.

“No,” he said when offered those reasons. “Tonight was special because it was against Clemens. He’s been my idol since I was a little kid.”

That means Clemens, 37, is old, by a pitcher’s standards. He has looked it at times this season, but did not last night.

This did not appear to be a case of Clemens exploiting inferior competition. True, in general Clemens has been far better against bad teams than good ones, but you don’t win five Cy Youngs fattening your stats against pushovers.

In 12 starts against teams with winning records, Clemens is 3-5 with a 5.71 ERA. In 10 starts against teams that now have losing records, Clemens is 8-0, 3.39.

No matter how strong Clemens finishes, he isn’t going to get his sixth trophy or sixth 20-win season. At this stage in his career, the numbers aren’t as meaningful as what Clemens wants to taste.

“I think he has come here for one reason,” Torre said. “Hoping to get to postseason play and get to the World Series.”

He tasted being on the right side of the always-tough-but-fair Stadium crowd and liked it.

“When you’re on the mound it’s a great adrenaline rush when they’re cheering for you,” Clemens said.

It was amazing Clemens could hear the cheering through the noise pollution that forever streams out of the center field loudspeakers at the Stadium. Nobody can kill a crowd’s momentum more swiftly than the Music Man, who must be allergic to human voices and human hands.

The second the Yankees started a rally in the eighth, the scoreboard prompted the crowd to, “Get Loud,” as if a crowd as sophisticated as the one that gathers nightly in The Bronx needs to be told when to cheer.

Especially on a night an all-time great is putting forth his best effort wearing pinstripes. The Rocket blasts off and you distract the crowd with sideshows, bombard the senses with music so loud as to cause vibrations in the seats? Tough one to figure.

And when the Yankees scored their runs off Milton, the synthetic clapping roared in from center field. The crowd fought the good battle, though, competing with technology to be heard by their hero of the night and they were heard. No small accomplishment.

Clemens will generate plenty of reaction from the crowd every time he pitches. He’s a lightning rod. Every fifth day, the issue of just how close to or far from the form that allowed him to win two Cy Youngs in Toronto will be the topic of discussion in the cars inching out of The Bronx.

Without a tight division race to cause much tension, the magic number on the minds of those who watch the Yankees closely will be the number of days it is until The Rocket’s next start.